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• Eugene Havas and an Early Attempt at Personal Diplomacy to Normalize US-Hungarian Relations, 1960-1964

  István Pál

  Views:

  348

  After the fall of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence, communist Hungary had struggled to break out of diplomatic isolation. The government formed by Secretary General of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party János Kádár had not been recognized by the Western powers, including the United States of America. American- Hungarian bilateral relations, therefore, were rather strained, and before the restitution of Hungary’s full status in the United Nations Organization, the US minimized the communication between the two countries. To change this, the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Service working under the aegis of the Ministry of Internal Affairs endeavored to engage expatriates—more or less famous or well-known professionals who still had some family connection to Hungary—as amateur gobetweens and semi-assets in order to find channels of communication with the American political elite and thus, via personal diplomacy, foster better relations between the two countries. The essay discusses the case of Eugene Havas (1899-1967), American economic expert and journalist of Hungarian decent. The representatives of the Kádár regime had great expectations towards him as an intermediary, this notwithstanding, as the essay will conclusively demonstrate the effect of Havas’s activities remained rather limited. (IP)

• Killing the Canard: Saint Stephen’s Crown, Nixon, Budapest, and the Hungarian Lobby

  Máté Gergely Balogh

  Views:

  200

  With the question of the return of the Holy Crown in the focus, the essay describes how certain leaders of the Hungarian-American community attempted to influence American foreign policy towards Hungary during the détente period. Whereas certain members of the Nixon and Ford administrations, as well as the State Department, had already considered returning the Crown to the People’s Republic of Hungary, many of the émigré groups were strongly opposed to this action, and voiced their protest whenever speculations surfaced in the press. With the help of certain American and Hungarian-American politicians in Congress as well as in the Republican Party, the decision to return the Crown could be presented as potentially too risky politically and postponed during the Nixon and the Ford administrations. But with the election of President Carter, the Hungarian-American groups seem to have lost their leverage, and as soon as the political decision was made they could no longer prevent the return. (MGB)

• Royall Tyler in Hungary: An American of the League of Nations and Hungarian Reconstruction Efforts, 1924–1938

  Zoltán Peterecz

  Views:

  283

  American-Hungarian relations were rarely closer on the personal level than in the interwar years. Although the United States followed the path of political and diplomatic isolation from Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and its absence in the League of Nations was conspicuous, in the financial and economic realm it remained more active, and many Americans worked in the various reconstruction projects across Europe either in their private capacities or under the auspices of the League. Royall Tyler was one such person who spent the larger part of the 1920s and 1930s in Hungary. Since the start of the financial reconstruction of Hungary in 1924, Tyler was a constant participant in Hungarian financial life, a contact between the Hungarian government and the League of Nations, and a sharp observer of events throughout the years he spent in Hungary and Europe. This essay focuses on his activities concerning Hungary’s financial and economic reconstruction and recovery. (ZP)

• Hollywood Ascendant: American Films in Hungary in the 1970s

  Róbert Takács

  Views:

  191

  Hungarian cultural policy makers denied Hungarian viewers access to American films between 1949 and 1956. Hollywood movies were publicly shown again behind the Iron Curtain from 1957 in spite of hostile American–Hungarian bilateral relations after the crushing of the Revolution of 1956. The de-Stalinized cultural policy of Hungary allowed for one third of the films released in Hungarian cinemas to come from capitalist countries. In the 1970s the United States became the largest non-socialist film exporter to Hungary and Hollywood export “sky-rocketed” at the end of the decade. The annual purchase of thirteen to twenty-nine American films still made it possible to apply ideological filters; however, only a part of the films released in Hungary could be regarded as useful in representing negative social trends in the United States. The majority of Hollywood movies screened in Hungary should rather be labeled as entertaining, and these served leisure on one hand and financial considerations on the other. Entertainment was recognized as a legitimate demand of the public after 1956 and the program of the cinemas had to be supplemented from Western sources. In the 1970s Hollywood became the number one Western movie entertainer in communist Hungary. The narrowing budgetary sources of cultural policy and the need for self-financing also paved the way for this tendency. (RT)